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2 Japan, China gear up for gas
talks By Hisane Masaki
TOKYO - Amid a thaw in chilly political
relations, Japan and China are gearing up to
resume high-level negotiations in Tokyo this month
on the nasty dispute over potentially lucrative
natural-gas deposits in the East China Sea.
Japan and China have so far held six
rounds of ministry bureau-chief-level talks on the
gas dispute, but the negotiations have been
suspended since last July. The two countries
agreed to resume the negotiations during Chinese
Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing's talks with Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and
Foreign Minister Taro Aso in
Tokyo in mid-February.
But
it still seems too early to expect a significant
breakthrough on the issue in the near term,
although some progress cannot be
ruled out. As a matter of fact, the two
energy-hungry Asian powers seem to have just
agreed to talk in the hopes of avoiding a reversal
in the recent improvement in bilateral ties.
Li visited Tokyo to lay the groundwork for
Premier Wen Jiabao's trip to Japan in mid-April,
the first by a top-level Chinese leader in seven
years. During his talks with Abe, Wen is expected
to invite the Japanese leader to make a return
visit to Beijing around October to keep up the
pace of top-level contacts on the 35th anniversary
of bilateral diplomatic relations being normalized
in 1972.
Sino-Japanese relations sharply
deteriorated under Abe's predecessor, Junichiro
Koizumi, who upset Beijing by repeatedly visiting
Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan's war
dead - including convicted war criminals involved
in the invasion of China and much of Asia before
and during World War II.
During the last
few years of Koizumi's five-and-a-half-year
premiership, China shunned top-level contacts with
Japan, even during international conferences in
third countries, in protest of what it viewed as
his glorification of Japan's militaristic past.
But bilateral relations began to warm up when Abe
succeeded Koizumi last September and made a
fence-mending trip to Beijing soon afterward.
The gas dispute topped the agenda for the
talks in mid-February between Li and Japanese
leaders, along with the issues of North Korea's
nuclear program and the past abduction of Japanese
nationals to train spies.
At issue are
Chinese natural-gas projects in the waters near
the so-called median line, which was drawn by
Japan but has not been recognized by China. The
line is meant to separate the two countries'
overlapping 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic
zones (EEZs). China argues that the entire East
China Sea continental shelf, extending eastward
nearly all the way to the southernmost inhabited
Japanese island of Okinawa, is a "natural
prolongation" of the Chinese mainland.
The
two countries have also been locked in the
territorial row over the tiny Senkaku Islands, or
Diaoyu Islands in Chinese, in the East China Sea.
The islands in question are on the Japanese side
of the median line and are in effect controlled by
Japan. The Senkaku Islands were initially claimed
by only Japan. But after the United Nations
Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East
reported the possibility of natural resources
lying under the seabed around the islands in 1968,
China and Taiwan also began claiming the islands
as their own.
Early last month, only days
before Chinese Foreign Minister Li's Tokyo visit,
a Chinese civilian ship entered areas near the
disputed islands and later into part of what Japan
claims is its EEZ. Tokyo filed a protest and
demanded an apology and explanation from Beijing,
claiming that China had failed to comply with the
earlier agreement to give prior notice about any
such movements in the disputed waters. But Beijing
defended the action, saying the ship was
conducting normal maritime research.
The
development of natural-gas resources in the East
China Sea emerged as an issue in June 2004 when
Japan learned China was developing the Chunxiao,
or Shirakaba in Japanese, gas field. Since then,
Japan and China have held six rounds of
bureau-chief-level talks and occasional informal
negotiations, without reaching any substantial
agreements.
Among the litany of issues
that have plagued ties between the two Asian
neighbors, the gas dispute is potentially the most
explosive, one that could spark even a military
confrontation. In September 2005, a Chinese
destroyer aimed its guns at a Japanese Maritime
Self-Defense Force P3-C surveillance plane in the
disputed waters near the Chunxiao/Shirakaba gas
field. Five Chinese warships had been observed in
the same area shortly before the incident.
The Sino-Japanese dispute also involves
other fields, including Duanqiao (Kusunoki in
Japanese), Tianwaitian (Kashi) and Longjing
(Asunaro). Although these fields are all on the
Chinese side of the Tokyo-designated median line,
Japan has expressed deep concern that China may be
siphoning off natural resources buried under the
seabed on the Japanese side of the median line.
In the past six rounds of
bureau-chief-level talks, the two countries have
agreed to develop gas reserves jointly in the
disputed waters. But they remain far apart over
specifics, especially the areas to
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ruled out. As a matter of fact, the two
energy-hungry Asian powers seem to have just
agreed to talk in the hopes of avoiding a reversal
in the recent improvement in bilateral ties.
